


This Thing We Have

by Astrum_Ululatum



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Blood, Book compliant, Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Eddie Stands Up to His Mom, Kidnapping, M/M, Over-use of italics, Richie Gets Taken Instead of Bev, Swearing, awkward first kiss, negligent parents, self-indulgent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 00:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12265461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrum_Ululatum/pseuds/Astrum_Ululatum
Summary: “It got Richie,” Eddie blurts out. He doesn’t know what else to say, doesn’t know if there even is anything else to say. He knows Bill and Richie argued after the Neibolt house, about hunting monsters and wasting the summer chasing after death (literally and metaphorically). But he also knows that once a Loser, always a Loser, and a Loser never lets another Loser down.- - -Yet another "Richie gets taken instead of Bev" fic.





	This Thing We Have

**Author's Note:**

> IT has been one of my favorite books for a long time and the new movie was phenomenal. I felt inspired, so I did this. (Excuse the title, I might change it later.)
> 
> Enjoy!

Richie Tozier is out of quarters. He checks his pockets multiple times each—shorts pockets, front and back, and the breast pocket of his bright Hawaiian shirt. He does a lap of the arcade, searching for dropped coins or spare change left in the return slots. He checks the payphone in the back and then crosses the street to check the one near the drug store. No dice. Richie Tozier has blown the entirety of his allowance _and_ his earnings from doing chores on _Street Fighter_. It only took him three weeks to go bankrupt. Great.

Richie stuffs his hands into his empty pockets and scuffs his feet on the pavement as he begins his dreary march home. The sun is still high in the sky and the air is warm; it’s a beautiful day and part of Richie longs to be down in the Barrens with the rest of the Losers… He sees a discarded soda bottle half under some hedges and kicks it ferociously. The bottle careens out in front of him, spinning madly as it goes, and then flies off the curb and into the street.

Stupid Stuttering Bill and his stupid face and his stupid Molly Ringwald crush and his stupid obsession with the missing kids. And stupid fucking clowns with werewolf claws for hands. Stupid haunted fucking houses with shitty flooring and shitty air and…and…

“ _Shit_ ,” Richie hisses, kicking out at nothing in particular and stomping more angrily towards home. This fucking _sucks_.

He pauses at an intersection and considers going left instead of right. Leftward would take him to the Kaspbrak residence where Eddie is no doubt bored out of his mind under the sharp watch of his mother. Maybe he could sneak into Eddie’s room through a window or something. Or maybe he could just knock on the front door and let Mrs. K just get straight to the part where she rings his neck for touching her precious, delicate boy. Eddie probably doesn’t want to see him right now anyway. Richie remembers the look on Eddie’s face when they brought him home with a freshly broken arm, he remembers the hard set of his jaw and the pinch in his brow as he sat in his mother’s car and refused to even glance sideways at his friends. More painfully, Richie remembers calling the next day and having Mrs. K gleefully inform him that Eddie doesn’t want to speak to him.

That had hurt more than Richie could ever express. He and Eddie had always been a pair; even within the Losers' Club, they were joined at the hip. No reason for it, no hard feelings amongst the rest of their friends, that’s just how it is. Was. To hear that Eddie—Eds, Eddie Spaghetti—didn’t want to talk to him…? That put a fucking arrow through Richie’s chest, an arrow that stayed and twisted deeper with every passing day.

Richie turns sharply to the right and continues trudging home. The house is quiet when he gets there. His dad is at work, filling cavities and tightening some poor kid’s braces, and his mom is probably on the backyard with a tall glass of her special iced tea. He thinks about poking his head out to let her know he’s here, but his mother—for all that she tries—never quite knows what to make of him.

He goes to the kitchen, makes himself a bowl of cereal and eats it in front of the TV. There’s nothing good on, so he just watches shitty infomercials for shittier products than no one needs until only milk remains. He downs that and dumps the bowl and spoon in the sink.

He hesitates in the hall, considering the wall-mounted phone and the little notepad filled with scribbled numbers next to it. Eddie’s number is in there, middle of the third page, jotted down in Richie’s sloppy scrawl. He’s had the number memorized for years now, can recite it forwards and backwards and in a plethora of voices and accents. He could sing it in his sleep, he knows it so well.

Lately, Richie has been entertaining the notion that he and Eddie are step above friends—and that doesn’t mean he thinks they’re _best_ friends or some girly shit like that. He can’t help it, as much as he tries, but the thoughts are there in the back of mind where he is powerless to muffle them. Always whispering and niggling and pointing out things like the precise shade of Eddie’s eyes and how soft his hair looks and all kinds of gay bullshit like that. Sometimes Richie wonders what’s so bad about a boy liking another boy the way boys are meant to like girls. Girls are fine, he supposes, he even sort of likes Bill’s new friend Beverly with her easy winks and sly smiles and the totally kickass way she helped them steal stuff from the pharmacy. But…at the same time, Richie can’t just deck a girl and rag on her and get his shit sent back tenfold like he can with Eddie— _with a guy_. All because some supposedly holy book with too-small text and too many words says that it’s wrong? Richie doesn’t buy it, not really, but that doesn’t mean he’s not scared.

The last fucking thing that he wants, that he needs, in his life is to give his mother another reason to look at him with such confusion and misunderstanding. And as cool as his dad is when he’s home, Richie’s scared to death of putting any pressure whatsoever on the meager bond they do have.

So he walks past the phone and he tries not to think about Eddie and the arrow that’s twisting deeper into his chest. Because he’s kinda been thinking lately that maybe Eddie gets it, too. Gets that _step above friends_ thing. It’s probably just wishful thinking.

Richie stomps up the stairs to his room with extra viciousness, feeling the impact of each stomp like pins and needles in the soles of his feet. And when he’s stomping down the hall, he feels warmth and wetness on his cheeks and he whips off his glasses to scrub roughly at his eyes. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_ … He kicks open the door to his room, glasses still in one hand and the other knuckling at his eyes. Then he looks up and he freezes. Mouth gaping and eyes red-rimmed, Richie slowly slides his glasses back into place and confirms the sight before him. His mind goes blank, filled only with the white static hiss of pure terror.

His room is plastered wall to wall with missing posters and his face is on every single one.

It’s the same poster he found in the Neibolt house and it’s _everywhere_. The posters cover his windows, conform to the shapes of his desk and his lamp and his stuff. The bed is blanketed with them, the pillows stuff with them, the bookshelf (filled largely with comics and knick-knacks) is bulging with posters. Richie’s own face in stark black-and-white grins at him from every possible surface of his bedroom.

His breath is starting to catch in his throat and some inane, distant part of his mind thinks that this is what Eddie feels when his asthma kicks in. It’s the thought of Eddie that spurs Richie into motion. He has to call him, has to call _someone_ , any of the Losers really, who will understand and…and _do_ something about this with him. Like they did for the blood in Beverly’s bathroom.

Richie spins around on his heel and finds the doorway filled with the immense, looming figure of the clown.

“Beep-beep,” the motherfucker says with a sinister smile and then its hand lashes out and takes Richie by the collar of his shirt. 

\- - -

 Maggie Tozier wakes from her doze when the sun moves around the protection of her umbrella and streams across her face. She blinks and rubs the lingering drowsiness from her eyes, startling when she finds one hand dampened from the loose grip she had on her tea. The ice is thoroughly melted and the glass is sweating profusely.

Taking this as her cue to go inside, Maggie rises from her lawn chair, winds down the umbrella, and takes her glass in with her. The house is quiet and Maggie assumes this to mean Richie is still off with his friends. She glances the clock and there is still another three hours until curfew. Since the curfew was announced, Richie has been coming screaming in with five minutes to spare to wolf down his dinner and retreat to his room. So, Maggie cleans the dishes in the sink and does some dusting around the house and doesn’t think much about the silence or her son.

She begins to prepare dinner, something warm and filling she thinks. She has just turned the oven on to preheat when Wentworth comes home at a quarter to six, smelling of mint toothpaste and soap and the slight tang of latex gloves. He leaves his shoes at the door and enters the kitchen to give her a kiss, hand lingering sweetly at her waist.

“How was your day?” she asks.

“Just fine,” he replies and then begins to tell her about a particularly tricky patient he had this morning. Maggie listens with half a mind and hums and chuckles in all the right places and doesn’t think of her son until she hears the hall clock strike seven. She has just pulled the pan of lasagna from the oven and set it on the stovetop to cool and the kitchen conspicuously Richie-less.

“Went,” she says carefully, “did Richie say anything to you this morning about staying at a friend’s tonight?”

“No,” says Wentworth, brow knitting with confusion and concern. “Last I heard his friend Bill was a, ah, _stupid mush-mouth_ and then something about Molly Ringwald. He was trying a new voice.”

Maggie feels a sharp stab of guilt for not knowing Richie was upset with one of his friends. Her boy and his little group have been palling around all summer so far; he always comes home sun-tired and streaked with mud and grinning. She’s pretty sure he always comes home grinning. But—and the stabbing guilt intensifies—she thinks maybe he hasn’t lately, but she can’t be positive. God, why couldn’t she have had a daughter? She would know what to do with a daughter, just like she always knows what to do with her sister’s daughter.

“Maggie,” says Wentworth, rising from his seat at the kitchen table. “Do you not know where our son is right now?”

Maggie claps her hands over her mouth, eyes welling up with shameful tears, and shakes her head.

\- - -

 A splatter of something cold and wet on his cheek brings Richie around. He groans and rolls fully onto his back and opens his eyes carefully. His glasses are crooked and smeared with gunk and it takes him a minute to find the coordination to clean them with his fingers.

The first thing he sees is the tower of junk and then, seconds later, the floating parade of bodies.

“Holy _fuck_ ,” he gasps as he scrambles to his feet. He doesn’t even reach full standing before the head-rush knocks him back down. He goes staggering sideways and lands hard on his hands and knees in a few inches of dirty water. His stomach rolls. Richie breathes until it goes away and then draws himself up again, listing leftwards as he does. He stumbles, hands flying out to steady himself, and falls against the junk tower.

He sees a broken tricycle, a cracked snow sled, roller blades attached by a mass of tangled laces, half a skateboard, and so many toys. More toys than Richie has ever seen outside of a toy store. All of them in varying states of neglect and decay, buried and tangled with mangled articles of clothing. Dolls with missing eyes and teddy bears with rotted fur. It’s a tower of childhood delights turned sour and sad.

And above it all, the bodies of the missing kids drift and turn like the most morbid carousel in the world. Richie feels bile rise in his throat. He claps a hand over his mouth and his fingers make contact with something cold and wet on his cheek. He draws his hand back and his fingers are smeared with blood. Richie gags and spits onto the floor, wipes furiously at his face to remove all traces of the blood.

Still rubbing at his cheek, Richie stumbles in a circle, searching for an exit. He finds an immense round porthole and rushes for it. The door is heavy and shut tight and won’t budge no matter how hard Richie pulls on it. He fumbles for a latch, trying to move the bar handle, but he can’t make it go. He thinks, maybe, if he just pushed a little more like… _this…_

An eerie jingle starts up, as if from the scariest jack-in-the-box, and a chill runs down Richie’s spine. He whips around and sees another door across the room, rectangular and open. He runs.

The stage door swings up and the _motherfucking_ clown appears before a demonic red backdrop, staring horribly with gleaming silver eyes. The clown has its head tilted as though in a trance, saliva stringing from the side of its mouth like a hungry mongrel. The sudden appearance of _It_ makes Richie stop in his tracks. They’ve made eye contact and now he’s stuck. Then it starts to dance.

“No fuckin’ thanks,” Richie mutters. He picks up his pace again, but has barely made it back into a run when the clown leaps off the stage and lands with an earth-shaking _thud_. Richie stops so hard he nearly falls on his ass and only barely manages to catch himself by pinwheeling his arms. He remains standing, but even so is dwarfed by the height and presence of the clown.

“Hiya, Richie,” it says with too-earnest enthusiasm. Then it snatches him up by the neck and lifts his feet off the ground. Richie sputters and claws at its hands, trying to break free, but its grip is too tight, too strong. The clown grins at him, buck teeth and yellowy incisors and painted lips slick with slobber.

Richie remembers seeing it looming over Eddie, poor Eddie with his wheezing breaths and broken arm. He remembers being so afraid that it would hurt him, hurt Eddie, and the acidic push of adrenalin that spurred Richie on. Then he remembers Bev, beautiful and badass, jamming an iron spike through the fucker’s head. He remembers how the clown had yowled and flailed and retreated to lick its wounds for nearly a month.

If the clown can be hurt, then it can be killed.

Suddenly, Richie doesn’t feel afraid anymore.

“Put me down, asshole,” he rasps, still prying at its fingers. He bares his teeth at the bastard and tries kicking out with his feet. The toes of his shoes bounce uselessly off the clown’s midsection.

“Don’t you want to float, Richie?” it asks, crooning slickly. “We all float down here.”

“Can it,” spits Richie. “I’m not scared of you anymore.”

The clown yanks him closer, brings its ugly face close ( _too close!_ ) to Richie’s and inhales deeply. Then it draws back, nose wrinkled in disgust, and shakes its head as if trying to expel a bad smell. It shoves its arms out to hold Richie at arm’s length and sneers at him.

“No,” it growls, “but you will be.”

Its mouth opens wide, wider, wider, and wider still. Its eyes roll back into its head just in time for the ever-widening mouth to push the eye sockets shut and turn them into mere creases around its growing lips. Rows and rows of yellow teeth appear, sliding in from the gummy recesses of its mouth in deadly spirals and there…far in the back of its throat… Lights. Tiny and triplet and twirling. Icy dread pools in Richie’s stomach and the terror that builds in his chest feels like a physical _thing_ sitting sharp and suffocating on his lungs and heart. Richie wants to look away, but he can’t. The lights are drawing him in and all he can do is stare, stare as the mouth grows and grows and the teeth push in and the lights dance and spin and he feels light buoyant like a balloon full of helium floating up up up and away…

\- - -

 Eddie has just finished lunch and is still sitting at his kitchen table, scribbling intently on his cast, when the telephone rings. He caps his Sharpie, satisfied with the thick red V over the S, and takes the handset off the cradle.

“Kaspbrak residence, Eddie speaking,” he answers as trained.

“Hi, Eddie, this is Mr. Tozier,” says a deep, familiar voice that Eddie immediately recognizes as, yes, being Richie’s father. “Is my son with you? Did he stay the night?”

A stone of dread drops in Eddie’s stomach and he fumbles one-handed for his inhaler despite today’s earlier revelation. He just. He hasn’t seen Richie since the Neibolt house, since he broke his arm, since… _It_. And the absence of his best friend does not sit well with him, despite telling his mother that he didn’t want to talk to them yet (which his mother had gleefully accepted). Except now Eddie misses his friends and any attempt to leave the house to see them has been met with his mother’s imposing bulk blocking the door and her insistence of his delicacy and illness.

Eddie has been humoring her more and more. The longer he thinks about it, the more he begins to believe Gretta Keene that his medications are bullshit.

And…and…if Richie isn’t at home and if _his parents_ are calling around looking for him, then… That can only mean…

“No, sorry, Mr. Tozier,” Eddie says hoarsely. “Richie hasn’t been around today or yesterday.” _Or for the last three weeks,_ he thinks miserably.

“If you see him…” Mr. Tozier starts and his voice sounds thick in a telling way.

“I’ll call,” promises Eddie and then hangs up. He stands there with his hand still on the phone and eyes sinking into the middle distance. He’s always kind of thought he and Richie had a _thing_ , a step above friendship kind of thing. Eddie’s never really looked at girls the way he knows he should, not even when Bev showed up with her long red hair (now short) and her big green eyes. He’s always found himself lingering on the emerging jawlines of his male peers and their broadening shoulders. And Richie. He always finds himself lingering on Richie.

He needs to find Bill. Bill will know what to do.

Nerves steeled, Eddie makes for the door. He takes two steps before he is cut off by the well-meaning (and manipulative) mass of his mother. He lurches to a halt and looks up to meet her eyes and, in doing so, has never before felt so small in comparison. She looms over him with arms akimbo and face waxy with sweat, peering at him with piggish eyes. She has a look on her face that Eddie knows all too well.

“Eddie, sweetie, where are you going?”

“To see my friends,” he says and feels proud when his voice doesn’t tremble.

His mom puts on an expression of gentle confusion. “I thought you said you didn’t want to talk to them anymore.”

“I said I wasn’t _ready_ ,” Eddie corrects firmly, “but I am now and I’m going to see them.”

“But you’re just getting over your sickness—”

“What sickness?” Eddie bursts, fumbling for the pill bottles in his fanny pack. “I know what these are! They’re _gazebos_! They’re _bullshit_!”

He flings the bottles and pills go flying in every direction. Eddie cannot believe his boldness and, judging by the expression on her face, neither can his mother. He takes advantage of her shock and pushes past her.

“I’m going to see my friends!” he shouts and slams the door behind him. Adrenalin carries him to his bike and sets him pedaling faster than he has ever dared to in the past. All the while, his heart is thumping madly and his lungs are pumping oxygen through his veins and he feels lighter and better and healthier than he can remember ever feeling in his young life.

Eddie doesn’t really recall arriving at Bill’s house, it’s all a confusing blur of panic and freedom. But he does remember ditching his bike gracelessly on the Denbrough’s front lawn and practically throwing himself up the front steps. He doesn’t knock, which is highly unlike him, just barges in and charges up the stairs to Bill’s room. He’s going to be so embarrassed if it turns out Bill isn’t at home, but Eddie can worry about that later if he has to. He focuses instead on not eating shit going up the stairs so fast and then whipping himself around the corner at the top of the stairs and careening down the hall to Bill’s room. Again, he forgoes knocking and throws the door open.

Bill is there, but it takes Eddie a second to notice that he isn’t alone. Beverly is there, too, red-eyed and shaken with tear tracks down her cheeks. (He won’t learn about what happened with her dad earlier that morning until much later.) They both gasp and scramble to their feet at Eddie’s abrupt entrance and there is a moment of suspension where they stare at each other with startled wide eyes.

“Eh-Eddie,” says Bill, “what the fuh- _fuck_?”

“It got Richie,” Eddie blurts out. He doesn’t know what else to say, doesn’t know if there even _is_ anything else to say. He knows Bill and Richie argued after the Neibolt house, about hunting monsters and wasting the summer chasing after death (literally and metaphorically). But he also knows that once a Loser, always a Loser, and a Loser never lets another Loser down.

Bill’s face turns steely and determined. Beside him, Bev scrubs the stray tears from her cheeks and then clenches her fists at her sides. They stand united before Eddie and his chest swells with awe and affection for his friends.

“I’ll cuh-call the others,” says Bill. 

\- - -

 Stan is the last to arrive at the Neibolt house, knuckles white around the grips of his bike’s handlebars and mouth pressed in a firm, tense line. Mike arrived minutes before with his grandfather’s cattle gun and a sash loaded with bullet charges. Ben came just before Mike, sweat dripping down his forehead from the combination of the day’s heat and the exertion of the journey.

While Bill and Bev uproot several loose, iron fence posts for weapons, Eddie unclips his fanny back and launches it into the bushes. Filled with rage and desperation (and _freedom_ ; glorious, bitter freedom), Eddie has never felt stronger. He barely looks up and around during the storm through the Neibolt house. He’s seen it all before and he doesn’t need to look again. No, he keeps his focus forward, on the back of Bill’s head and the approaching door to the basement.

The basement is dank and it reeks of rot and death. The air down here is cold, biting, and it burns Eddie’s lungs with every inhale. He shudders, but his steps never falter. And when Mike throws the knotted length of rope over the edge of the well, Eddie’s only hesitation is to make sure the hand on his broken arm will be able to grip properly.

Waiting in the hole in the side of the well, in the entryway to _It’s_ lair, Eddie concentrates on breathing. He scoots aside to let Stan in and listens with his heart in his throat to the sounds of fighting going on above them. He nearly passes out with relief when Mike’s voice calls down to them after a boy-shaped blur tumbled past them into the unknown depths.

But then Stan is gone, vanished into thin air, and the time it takes to find him again crawl by. Eddie is torn. Afraid for his friend, suddenly missing, and anxious to find his _best_ friend, lost for nearly twenty-four hours. All he can think about is the violence of last month in the Neibolt house. The horribly playful way in which the clown pretended to eat his fingers and the blood that dripped upwards from its head when Bev skewered it. He thinks about Betty Ripsom and her missing shoe. He thinks about remains of Cheryl Lamonica found in the Kenduskeag and how they needed dental records to identify her. And when they finally find Stan and that _thing_ is attached to his face, Eddie thinks the worst. He thinks _this is it, Stan is dead_ with a terrible icy calm.

The relief that Stan is still very much alive is a rush of warmth that starts at his chest and spreads outwards to his fingers and toes. The sound of Stan’s moans of pain and betrayal and upset breaks Eddie’s heart (even though he didn’t think there was much left to break after it shattered upon learning that Richie had been taken). Eddie lands hard on his knees before his friend and wraps his arms around Stan tightly, pressing his face against Stan’s chest.

“You left me!” Stan wails, blood dribbling down the sides of his ashen face. “You let It get me!”

“We love you,” Eddie tells the other boy earnestly. “We’d never do that to you.”

“You’re not my friends!” Stan cries, voice thick and gummy with tears. The rest of the Losers huddle in around Stan, murmuring assurances of their love and loyalty. Except Bill. Eddie makes sure to latch onto Stan’s hand as they chase after Bill, who is chasing after… _something_. Stan is sniffling and rubbing snot from his nose with the back of his hand in a very un-Stan-like manner. If Eddie still had his fanny pack, he would have so many tissues to offer his friend.

Somehow, Eddie finds himself heading the charge through the sewers now that their leader has vanished. Every intersection they come to, Eddie knows which way to go and he doesn’t know _how_ he knows, he just does. It’s like there’s some kind of perfect compass in his brain that is tuned into Bill’s location and it guides Eddie unerringly. His impeccable sense of direction isn’t even thrown by him tripping and falling into a disgusting pool of greywater and _heads_. _Human_ fucking _heads_! _BARF_.

Eddie gags as Stan and Mike haul him back to his feet and then he pushes on. Dripping and determined, Eddie forges onward with his friends at his back and only ( _only_ ) falters when they reach an immense porthole door that has been forced open a crack. Beyond…can only be the inside of the Standpipe with its yawning grill ceiling and echoey interior. The Losers freeze at the sight of the tower of broken toys and the grungy carnival railcar that makes up its base. They gape in horror at the lazy parade of dead children floating around the top of the tower, casting grisly shadows in the dusty half-light that filters down through the grill.

“Eddie,” whispers Bev, tugging on Eddie’s damp sleeve and pointing with a trembling finger. Eddie follows and his eyes land on Richie’s form, horribly still and fucking _floating_. Eddie’s heart (the fragmented remains of it) drops out of his chest. _Oh no_.

“ _Richie_ ,” he gasps and breaks into a sprint.

He’s too short. Even with his running start, Eddie can’t build enough momentum to jump high enough to reach the bottoms of Richie’s chucks. He turns to beg his friends to help, but doesn’t need to say a word. Mike is already there and squatting in an obvious invitation to lift him. Eddie puts a hand on Mike’s shoulder for balance as the larger boy hoists him up effortlessly. Once Mike is fully standing, Eddie reaches up and wraps his good hand around Richie’s ankle.

“Got him,” he says. Mike lowers Eddie back to the ground and the others reach up and grab onto Richie’s waist and wrists and shoulders as they came within reaching distance. When Richie’s feet finally touch the floor, nothing happens. He just stands there with his face slack and his arms limp at his sides and his eyes. Oh, God, his eyes. Instead of their usual warm brown with tiny greenish flecks, Richie’s eyes are a horrible cloudy gray that stare blankly into nothingness. His glasses are skewed and beginning to fall apart after the tape holding them together was doused in shitty water.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ben asks quietly.

“Richie,” calls Eddie, shaking the boy’s shoulders urgently. “Richie, wake up.”

Richie wobbles and sways, his head lolls and then flops forward until his chin bumps his chest. He stands so limply that Eddie fears he’ll fall over if he let’s go. The glasses slide a bit down Richie’s nose and Eddie reaches out automatically to push them back up. His hand lingers in front of Richie’s face and drifts to his cheek, fingers skimming the cold clammy skin.

All at once, Eddie understands. Richie may be standing before him, but his mind is floating with the rest of the kids above their heads. He is basically comatose—he could wake up, but there is no guarantee. The Losers could leave him here while they fight that fucking clown and they could win, but it wouldn’t make Richie wake up. Richie could stay with them physically, breathing and heart beating, but his mind would always be here with the dead and everyone who loves him would watch him wither and starve and slowly decay until there was nothing left to him except an empty skeleton.

The Losers could fight that fucking clown and they could lose and then they would all float together and none of this would matter anyway.

“Come on, Richie,” pleads Eddie, voice going thin and slightly hysterical. “You have to wake up.”

Eddie always thought he and Richie had a bit of a _thing_ going on between them. A _more-than-friends_ kind of thing that neither them had plucked up the courage to talk about yet. He always assumed that eventually they would and everything would be grand. Boffo even. He never once imagined that this thing wouldn’t pan out—he and Richie had an understanding, unspoken but undeniably there. He never thought they’d never get a chance to make it spoken and especially not because one of them gets _evil clowned_ into a freaky coma. Why would he? That’s batshit insane.

Eddie lifts his other hand to Richie’s other cheek, raising the other boy’s head from his chest. The bulk of his cast bumps awkwardly against Richie’s jaw, but neither boy is really in a position to care. Eddie’s only vaguely aware of his friends surrounding him and Richie, aware that they are staring with worried faces, aware that they are in a literal den of evil.

But panic is building in his chest and it’s not the usual kind. Eddie isn’t thinking about monster clowns or dead kids; he isn’t thinking about germs or how unsanitary the sewers are; he isn’t thinking about his friends or how they might react. He’s thinking about Richie. He’s thinking about that _thing_ they’ve got going on and how he never got to act on it and neither did Rich. He’s thinking about the little mad voice in the back of his mind screaming _what if, what if, what if_ and he’s thinking about all those dumb Disney movies and how… It’s stupid. Literally the stupidest goddamn thing ever. But, fuck it, right? He’s got nothing to lose and potentially so much to gain.

Holy fuck, Eddie hopes this stupid goddamn thing works.

“Fuck it,” he says on an exhale and goes on his toes to press his lips to Richie’s. The kiss lasts no longer than a few seconds and it’s awkward as fuck, because Richie’s lips are cold and unresponsive. Eddie hears his friends react with startled exclamations, but nothing more than if Eddie had abruptly kissed an unresponsive girl. (He feels a flutter of relief and optimism that he doesn’t linger on, because there’s no time for that right now.)

The world narrows down to just Eddie and Richie and that world hangs in horrible suspension for the longest length between heartbeats ever. Then the brown reemerges in Richie’s eyes and the helium leaves his body and he’s _back_. His cheeks warm under Eddie’s hands, returning to normal body temperature, and he blinks owlishly behind the magnifying lenses of his broken glasses.

Eddie abruptly realizes that he is still holding Richie’s face and quickly pulls his arms back. He waits for the snappy response or inappropriate joke, but for once Trashmouth doesn’t live up to his name. For once, Richie appears speechless. He just stares back at Eddie and then, quite suddenly, surges forward and locks the smaller boy in a fierce hug. Eddie hugs back without a second thought.

“Um, guys?” says Stan. “Is now the time?”

Richie pulls back. He dusts himself off (fat lot of good that does) and then makes a fussy show of straightening Eddie’s sopping wet shirt with familiar comedy. Eddie rolls his eyes.

“Right,” says Richie. He turns and surveys the Losers clustered around him. “Where’s Bill? We’ve got a fucking clown to kill.”

 

 

\- - -

 

 

An eternity later, the Losers' Club is standing in a circle with their palms sliced open, swearing to return if It does. Richie’s glasses are toast; apparently beating the shit out of a murder clown is hazardous to eyewear. His parents had been unimpressed with the loss, but also relieved that he was still alive, so he didn’t get scolded. He hasn’t gotten new glasses yet and he can’t see shit, but he gets the gist of things. He can see enough to make his way home, he thinks. The day is bright and blue and beautiful, he can tell that much. He can hear birds singing and water chuckling over rocks in the stream somewhere behind him. It all seems so surreal—hadn’t they just been fighting for their lives?

“Come on, Rich,” Eddie murmurs, taking Richie by the arm and guiding him out of the clearing. They call quiet goodbyes to their friends and it all feels weirdly final even though they’re probably going to hang out tomorrow.

As they walk back to where they’ve stashed their bikes (the whole gang, not just them; Eddie wouldn’t let Richie bike on his own and insisted they ride double), Richie slides his arm free so he can lace their fingers together instead. Eddie doesn’t say anything, but he squeezes Richie’s hand and that says plenty.

“I remember something else,” Richie says casually, “from my coma vision.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a pause and Richie doesn’t need perfect vision to _see_ the tight-lipped bitch-face of annoyance Eddie is sporting in response to his non-answer. Richie grins.

“Well, are you going to _tell_ me, jackass?”

“Oh?” Richie feigns a delicate type of surprise, voice going high and airy. “You want to hear about it?”

Eddie untangles their hands so he can punch Richie hard on the shoulder, but then he immediately re-laces their fingers after. Richie has the biggest shit-eating grin on his stupid face. And when he just _grins_ and doesn’t say anything, Eddie almost punches him again and this time he _won’t_ hold the fucker’s hand after. Fortunately, it doesn’t come to that.

“I said that I saw us as grownups facing It again,” Richie says, a twinkle in his eye and a smile twitching the corners of his lips. “But I didn’t mention that grownup you and grownup me were holding hands.”

Eddie ducks his head a bit to hide his initial reaction: a neon blush that makes his whole head feel way too hot, like he’s getting a wicked fever. Then he groans dramatically and exclaims, “Ah, _fuck_ , so you mean I’m gonna be stuck with your dumb face for the next twenty-seven years?”

Richie explodes into gut-busting laughter, pure and free and splendid. Eddie twists his mouth to keep from joining in.

“Fuck off, you dick,” Richie wheezes between laughs. “You fuckin’ love my dumb face.”

Rather than try to deny the (completely true) claim, Eddie shoves Richie into a bush and then runs for his bike while the other boy is down. Richie howls with laughter, unable to get back up with the force of it. He’s sprawled in a bush with sticks poking his back and his ass, itchy leaves scratching at his skin, and he can barely differentiate one tree from another. He feels _incredible_.

“Abuse!” he shouts, but the accusation is ruined by his mirth. He scrambles and flails and untangles his Hawaiian shirt from the snare of twigs and branches and gives chase, using the sound of Eddie’s laughter to guide his way.


End file.
